Lisa,
Our PTO is in a very similiar situation to yours. I hope your first meeting goes well.Let us know how it went and how these issues are being handled in your school.
Good Luck
We are in a public school! We would do anything for the kids--our biggest problem is that there is only a handful of reliable parents that are willing to give all of their time!! (We have a very diverse school) (Many parents are single full time workers that can't or won't help) The teachers are telling us they still want our support (meaning our money to fund all their extra classroom spending) but won't do all the things they used to do!
How can we expect parents to participate in all of our fundraisers when the teachers are acting like this!! Our first PTO meeting of the year is this Thursday and so many parents have already told us how mad they are! Usually our meetings are very friendly and positive but we have a very bad feeling!
Your principal should not have anything to do with the fact that your teachers are working without a contract. That happens because the teachers union and the Board of Ed could not agree on a new contract. Principals are not members of the BOE or of the teachers Union and therefore have no conrol over such matters.
We were in the boat some years back. The first thing the Union does is tell the teachers not to do anything that they do not get paid for. So in our case as in yours the PTO and class parents were asked to pick up the slack and we willingly did it. Some teachers were mad, but we just told them matter of factly that their dispute was not taking presidence over our children. That we are in this business to give our kids the best. While their situation is unfortunate it does not mean the kids should go without because at the end of the day they are the ones who will lose out.
As SHC noted our class parties are solely held by our class Moms too. I would think long and hard about disbanding over this. If you do what will the children be left with at this difficult time?
They will no longer have the teachers giving anything exrta and no parent group to support them. No matter what insanity is going on in the school the kids should not pay the price.
Are you a private or public school? If you are private school, like ours, your money would go back to the school. I'm not sure what your situation--perhaps your by-laws would give you some direction?
What do you mean that the principal is trying to get the PTO board to do the "extras" such as class parties? Our class parties are primarily handled by our room mothers, which are sort of a branch of our PTO, so that's not too unusual. What else is your principal asking you to do?
Try to take a deep breath and get some more feedback from all the wise folks on this board before your group does anything drastic that would be detrimental to the children of the school.
Keep us posted!
SHC
Our PTO group has been great the past 2 years, last year we got a new principal who has wreaked havoc in the school and now with our PTO. Our teachers are working without a contract and our principal is trying to the PTO board to do everything the teachers call "exta's"--assemblies, class parties, etc. We can't and are thinking of stepping down because we are in the middle of a horrible situation!! We have quite a bit of money in our account--what happens to that money if we do step down? We don't want the principal to get it!!! Please advise!
